


the summers die, one by one (how soon they fly, on and on)

by chaos_harmony



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-19 18:23:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9454508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaos_harmony/pseuds/chaos_harmony
Summary: There are people you can see every day of your life without fully registering their presence. Cassian at twelve, and fifteen, and twenty-two will register Shara Bey's proximity to his every time. Their friendship (do we call this a friendship?) is a stuttering, awkward thing, gasping into existence on great gulps of shared-syllable accents, space between words and worlds, tomorrow and tomorrow andmañanahere again, here, in the countdown of heartbeats between this son of Fest, this daughter of Yavin, their bodies far from home, but souls somehow miraculously, improbably entwined.What else do you fight for, if not that?Or: a brief, nonlinear history of Cassian Andor and Poe Dameron, in a world where the crew of Rogue One lives to meet the son of Shara Bey.





	

The General says, "If he's caught," then stops. Her hair's gone silver in streaks that paint her regal, beauty weighted in years conquered beneath her bones. Her eyes, though, liquid dark, haven't changed.

 

"If he's caught," she starts again, throat almost visibly knotted. "We'll have to deny all knowledge that he even went in. We'll say he went rogue. You, of all people, understand why."

 

Cassian meets the General's liquid dark gaze, and emphatically does not think of the last time he saw those eyes in another person. He does, however, think of the General in the distant bloom of her youth, hair dark as her eyes, face unlined, imprint of a galaxy in constant motion not yet writ in war and love across skin and soul alike.

 

"Perfectly," says Cassian.

 

*

 

When Cassian was eleven, the first friend he ever made on Yavin 4, in their earliest encounter, tossed him headfirst into a pile of rusty droid parts.

 

"Oh, Force!" cried the girl, big-eyed and horrified. She hopped anxiously from one foot to the other, looking remarkably vulnerable for a girl capable of flinging boys her age unceremoniously over one hip with the correct, military-taught application of leverage. "Oh, Force, I'm so sorry, are you all right?"

 

"You're supposed to aim for the training mat," Cassian mumbled into a hunk of metal.

 

"I know. I know, I misjudged the angle, and one thing led to another. I'm sorry," she repeated. The girl's teeth, bright against brown skin, sank into her lower lip. "You did give me a good fight."

 

"Not as good as you gave me." Cassian picked himself up, because what else was there to do? He blinked, startled by the friendly, callused hand thrust beneath his nose.

 

"Shara," offered his bright-toothed training partner. "I'm Shara Bey."

 

Her accent on the syllables woke something long-asleep in the back of his brain. "Cassian Jeron Andor."

 

Shara Bey's eyes went round and pleased. "From Fest?" Her mouth curled, then spat him a line of something distinctly Yavi-accented, but still warm on his ears, even now. "You meet anyone else on base who speaks the language?"

 

A few. High-born Alderaanian courtiers whose tongues left a peculiar lisp to the familiar Festian cognates. A couple other Yavi. The crook of Cassian's mouth felt sore from disuse (or maybe that was a bruise from the droid parts). He hadn't smiled, not really, since Papá died back on Fest. "None with your aim," he told Shara Bey in the same language.

 

It felt, just a little bit, like home.

 

*

 

"Would you like to know his odds of survival?" K-2 hovers over the edge of Cassian's bed, mechanical eyes blinking once, twice, a droid's approximation of human fretting.

 

Cassian's hand – scarred, callused, aging with each spin of this world – finds K-2's cool metal arm. "That's all right, Kay."

 

*

 

Growing up, they don't see each other often, Cassian and Shara, but when they do, it matters. It's not a romance, precisely. The bare, utilitarian, blood-letting adolescence of Cassian's coming-of-age disallows him the luxury of naming what, precisely, Shara Bey is to him.

 

There are people you can see every day of your life without fully registering their presence. Cassian at twelve, and fifteen, and twenty-two will register Shara Bey's proximity to his every time. Their friendship (do we call this a friendship?) is a stuttering, awkward thing, gasping into existence on great gulps of shared-syllable accents, space between words and worlds, tomorrow and tomorrow and _mañana_ here again, here, in the countdown of heartbeats between this son of Fest, this daughter of Yavin, their bodies far from home, but souls somehow miraculously, improbably entwined.

 

What else do you fight for, if not that?

 

*

 

Cassian doesn't need K-2 to tell him the odds of Shara's son surviving his stint as a spy. He doesn't need to hear aloud that the odds are next to nothing.

 

(Cassian remembers the first time he held Poe, soft, warm, quiet with the promise of life after so much death, the child’s laughter and love unconditional. Cassian remembers chubby arms eager for the embrace of a spy, a saboteur, a murderer, a bloodstained patriot.

 

Poe, eyes liquid dark as his mother's, already smiling same as hers, says only, "Cass, Cass, Cass!" and demands to be lifted skyward by his mother's strange, bloody, beloved friend.

 

What were the odds of someone like Shara finding someone like Cassian across this broad stretch of tired, war-worn galaxy, the crash of his body against those droid parts all those years ago?

 

"Next to nothing," says K-2, years later.)

 

So too were Cassian's chances of survival after stealing Galen Erso's planet-killing plans, and stealing Galen Erso's dark-haired, fierce-eyed daughter too, in one fell death-defying swoop. And yet.

 

*

 

She did kiss him, just once. Shara. They were sixteen, a rare moment on the same base at the same time. She was ready to fly her first solo mission, vibrating fear and pride and determination all at once. Her lips scraped soft and chapped against his mouth, which might well have been nothing but nerve endings.

 

"For luck," said Shara, and winked, defiant, but her hands still shook, when she blurted out, "I've never kissed anyone like that before. I just wanted to, in case..."

 

"I've never kissed anyone at all," said Cassian, so she wouldn't have to finish a sentence they both knew the ending to. His mouth tasted like the fruit she'd eaten at breakfast that morning, something local-grown, not quite native to his planet, or hers. Approximated familiarity lingered in the shared taste on their tongues.

 

"Hope I make it back," said Shara, breezy, like it wouldn’t really matter, in the end.

 

Cassian knew, even then – taught by the long, cruel reach of wartime's arm – how to read between the things people say. He switched languages. "You will," he said, with the sort of certainty unique to a mother tongue. "Shara, you _will_."

 

What a time, really, to be sixteen years old.

 

*

 

"Cass," says Jyn Erso now, curled warm beside him in their bed. Her once-dark hair's gone grey, her mouth bracketed in battle-harsh lines. Words he taught her in their thirties spill from her tongue, foreign-accented, but words nonetheless: born of Fest, of long-lost Alderaan, of Shara Bey's terrified mouth on Cassian's at sixteen.

 

"Poe will come back, _cariño_ ," says Jyn, in her lover's mother tongue. It's a tongue that speaks defiance against First Order and Empire alike. It's a tongue whose every syllable is an act of love. "He will, Cass. He will."

 

*

 

The first time Cassian met the man Shara would one day marry, Kes Dameron clapped a big, warm hand over Cassian's shoulder and announced, disturbingly delighted, "Andor! I've heard so much about you from Shara. Is it true you were already an excellent kisser at the tender age of fifteen?"

 

Cassian wasn't – still isn't – the sort to exclaim things like "Oh, _Force_ " aloud, but a man could yell all kinds of nonsense in the privacy of his own head.

 

Shara, groaning, cuffed her lover's arm. "I told you not to bring that up!" she wailed in Yavi. "Seriously, I did," she pled at Cassian, who bit his lip against the bubble of mirth inside his chest.

 

"Sixteen," said Cassian in the same language, all innocence.

 

"Cass!" squawked Shara, betrayed, as Kes' grin broadened.

 

"We were sixteen, during that kiss, not fifteen," Cassian continued, thoughtfully deadpan. "And I don't know about excellent, but I like to think my technique won points for effort."

 

Kes Dameron's laughter, both then and now, is the sort of sound Cassian thinks could carry clean across the galaxy, if he wanted it bad enough. In the seconds before Kes finished laughing at the expense of Cassian’s teenage kissing misadventures, Shara's new lover had already snuck quiet into the space beneath Cassian's chest, nestled alongside Shara.

 

Cassian still doesn't smile much. He always forgets how good it feels until he does.

 

*

 

(The day Shara Bey dies, Kes Dameron will bury his head against Cassian's shoulder for ten minutes straight. Neither man will weep. But their arms will lock silent around each other, unyielding in the face of all grief, all love, the galaxy has to give.)

 

*

 

What Cassian remembers, spinning across memory, like a live holo-feed spanning present-day:

 

Poe grows up too quick for even Cassian’s sniper-trained eyes to trace the trajectory of boy to man, one instant the laughing toddler crying out for “Cass, Cass, Cass!” the next a boy whose hand lingers white-knuckled in Cassian’s grip at his mother’s funeral, the next a gangly teenager making moon eyes at General Organa, though in fairness, Poe seems to share this pastime with every man, woman, and remotely sentient being within a ten-foot radius of Leia.

 

Cassian, in Shara’s absence, makes gruff efforts to teach the boy certain facts of life, to which Poe at fourteen turns beet red and bright-grinned, hand mussing the back of his hair, as he argues, “But Uncle Cass, I already heard this all from Papá, and besides, there’s this boy I met the other night on Coruscant, and we’ve been –”

 

“You’ve been _what_ ,” thunders Cassian. (Jyn will later snort and describe the sound Cassian makes as a squawk, not a _thundering_ , a ridiculous argument Cassian refuses to dignify with a response.)

 

“And this incredible Twi’lek chick, she’s got legs down to –”

 

“There’s _more than one_?”

 

“So, you see, I know what I’m doing –”

 

“No one at fourteen knows what they’re doing!”

 

(“That boy of mine is precocious,” Kes will offer much later, while Cassian silently drowns himself in Corellian ale. “Like father, like son. Just because you didn’t kiss girl or boy until you were seventeen years old –”

 

“Sixteen,” hisses Cassian over a sweating ale glass.

 

“ – doesn’t mean we were all mimicking monastic life in a Jedi Temple at that age, you know?

 

“I was not _mimicking_ _monastic_ _life in a Jedi_ _Temple_! There was a war – ”

 

“You _are_ kind of a prude, Cassian. Don’t get me wrong, you do right by Poe. Kid couldn’t ask for a better guardian, even if I think giving him a vibro-knife at eight was a little young –”

 

“It was a _utility_ knife. And it’s not wrong, for children to know how to defend themselves – ”

 

“Or when you taught him immersion Yavi, and he spoke with that ridiculous Festian accent of yours for a week –”

 

“A cultural service to your ungrateful brat,” drawls Cassian, “given that we speak the _correct_ accent on Fest _–”_

 

“Hah!” Kes snorts into his ale. “You mean a derivative dialect of Yavi.”

 

“At least he doesn’t speak with some Alderaanian courtier’s lisp.”

 

Kes gives a great, visceral shudder. “Now, that much, my man, I will drink to.”

 

“To Shara,” Cassian finds himself saying, quiet, smiling. The smiles emerge more frequently these days, even as his hair goes greyer with every new man, woman, or alien Poe decides to flirt with, which means Cassian should be fully silver inside the week at this rate. “And raising her boy right.”

 

“To Shara,” agrees Kes. “The best of us all.”)

 

*

 

Shara loved every member of Cassian's death-kissed, shell-shocked crew of destroyer-destroying rogues with the sort of instantaneous ferocity only she and her family seem capable of, but to this day, Cassian suspects she loved Jyn best of all.

 

She’d watch Cassian watching Jyn, that full familiar mouth curled happy and wide, and kick him unceremoniously in the ankle. “Cass! Do you have a _type_?”

 

Cassian glared at her. “I don’t know what you mean.”

 

“You know, whip-smart, dark and pretty, can beat your sad ass in a fight –”

 

“You didn’t beat me, you tossed me into a pile of _droid parts_ when you were aiming for a training mat.”

 

“See, you _do_ ,” crowed Shara, victorious. “You _so_ have a type.”

 

(Maybe she has a point.)

 

*

 

“Stop trying to teach Poe about the birds and the bees,” Jyn advised in a monotone, while Cassian nursed a hangover, after one too many rounds of ale with Kes. “Trust me, he already knows everything you do, and then some.”

 

Cassian, wincing and gingerly shucking his shirt, was beside her on the bed in an instant. “Did he tell you something? I swear to the Force, that boy – ”

 

Jyn rolled her eyes with extravagant feeling. “Will not be the _death_ of you, despite your frankly excessive histrionics, _cariño_ , if you’d just learn to let the boy be. Kes has said so. Chirrut and Baze have said so. Even Bodhi thinks the vibro-knife on his eighth birthday was a bit much – ”

 

“It was a _utility_ knife – ”

 

“Besides,” Jyn interrupted loudly, thigh pressed to his, “There are more critical matters that demand your attention.”

 

Sunlight warmed her skin as her robe slipped strategically sideways, gaze gone coy and wicked, and for the next hour, Cassian forgot about Poe entirely.

 

Of course, a week later, when Cassian went to see Poe, he found the boy in a thoroughly indecent – if acrobatically impressive – position with the Pava girl from his piloting course.

 

“ _Uncle Cass_ ,” shrieked Poe, trying to cover them both. The Pava girl offered no help at all in this endeavor, all long black hair slipping over bare golden shoulders, as she threw her head back and cackled, utterly un-self-conscious.

 

Jyn, for her part, lacked any sympathy whatsoever when Cassian relayed this story. “I did try to tell you,” she said, with a mulish little shrug, “and did you listen?”

 

“Jyn, querida, _please_ ,” groaned Cassian, hands still covering his eyes.

 

“You have no one but yourself to thank for the trauma.”

 

“The Pava girl – ”

 

“ _Jessika_ , you mean. I quite like her, myself. Clever, strong-willed, a rather fetching brunette.”

 

Cassian’s eyebrows climbed. “Sounds familiar.”

 

A smile flickered across Jyn’s mouth, knowing and kind. “In more ways than one, my love.”

 

*

 

There’s news.

 

A First Order attack. Lor San Tekka dead. A crash landing on Jakku, and Poe gone missing, presumed –

 

Cassian’s world whitens at the edges.

 

*

 

Cassian was secretly, selfishly glad, when Poe decided against entering the intelligence corps. General Organa needed every good spy she could get, but Poe wasn't even a good spy, not really. Poe was bold and bright and unequivocally warm, and in the hidden places tucked beneath Cassian's chest, the bloodstained patriot whispered, _but you don't need Poe, you don't need to take him, Poe is good and Poe is kind and Poe is the best of what the Republic should be; keep him safe, spare him, spare him, spare this one bright-toothed boy with the liquid dark eyes._

 

"It's just, I don't think I'm really suited to be a career intelligence officer, you know?" said Poe over dinner one day, then added in a hurry, "I hope that doesn't hurt your feelings, Uncle Cass, I know what you did for the war effort, and you're amazing –"

 

" _Mijo_ ," Cassian interrupted, feeling warm. "You don't owe me any apologies."

 

"Oh, good," said the boy, his face shining with relief and love. "Because it's true what I said as a kid, I really do think I should be a fighter pilot like Ma, after all. What do you think?"

 

Cassian lost track a while ago of how many rounds of Corellian ale Kes Dameron still owed him. Silently contemplating the death, maiming, and general injury statistics of X-wing pilots, Cassian added at least five more to the number.

 

*

 

A secret: Cassian's not always sure he believes in the Force. A man who lives the majority of his life in shadow will always see more darkness than light, and Cassian, buried in his most private and shameful memories (blood and blood and always more blood, every week another death, another grave to fill), can't help remaining unconvinced of true balance, whatever Chirrut preaches, whatever Jedi scripture says.

 

Still, as he sits alone and awake, Poe's absence ringing stone-cold echoes inside his head, Cassian finds himself praying.

 

_I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me, and Force, if there is an ounce of tenderness in your hand upon this galaxy, if you have ears to listen to one foolish, murderous old man's plea, then spare him, spare him, spare my boy, spare this one speck of light in this dark and terrible galaxy, let him live, let him live, let him live, let him live, let him live, let him live, let him –_

 

The door creaks open. Cassian whirls, ancient instinct guiding his hand to the blaster at his hip. Stops. Oxygen collects in his lungs, but won't emerge.

 

"Hi, Uncle Cass," croaks Poe, one eye bruised shut. He wiggles heavily bandaged fingers in greeting. "Did you miss me?"

 

*

 

Cassian remembers:

 

Shara, the homecoming hero at sixteen after her first mission, stumbling into Cassian's clumsy open arms, as her fist pounded his back, her laughter impish in his hair.

 

"Did you miss me, Cass?"

 

*

 

Poe's a man grown, more years under his belt than even Cassian had during that fateful escape from the ashes of Scarif, but in some secret place beneath Cassian's chest, Poe will always be small and chubby-armed and smiling with Shara's eyes, shouting "Cass, Cass, Cass!" as he demands to be held.

 

Cassian's arms are a vise around the muscled plane of the grown man's back, Poe's inhale and exhale hitching relief and joy in turn, as Cassian whispers fierce into his boy's curls, "Your mother would be proud, _mijo_. Your mother would be so proud."

**Author's Note:**

> "The summers die, one by one / how soon they fly on and on" is a line stolen from "Bring Him Home," of Les Mis fame. Listen to Ramin Karimloo sing an absolutely stunning rendition of the whole song [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeWIV1cFohs).


End file.
